InnerVentures

  • Competitive Advantage in the Age of AI

    Classic strategy levers—being first, better, cheaper, different, or protected by a moat—decay fast in the AI era. This piece explores how advantage is really shifting to workflow-specific depth, distribution, trust, and an overlooked factor: your organization’s capacity to absorb change.

    Stephen Danelutti

  • What Actually Determines AI’s Value

    This SenseMaking roundup pulls together nine smart pieces on where AI is really at: what it costs to run at scale, why humans are still the bottleneck, and how learning organizations are quietly beating those just chasing the “best” model.

    Stephen Danelutti

  • Value realisation for next-gen AI services – field lessons

    For more than a decade, enterprise software has been priced by the seat. You bought a licence, you handed it to a user and the cost for use was fixed. Agentic AI quietly breaks that model. When an assistant can run a long, multi-step job on your behalf — reading across files, calling tools, drafting,…

    Stephen Danelutti

  • Moving fast and slow with AI

    The pressure to adopt AI at speed is producing a great deal of noise but not a huge amount of signal. I’ve captured some recent articles that span several similar themes in this context. From economists resurrecting a 40-year-old productivity paradox; to philosophers challenging Silicon Valley’s token-counting obsession; to Microsoft’s diagnosis of organisations as the…

    Stephen Danelutti

  • Innovation theatre and the value of AI

    We are in another cycle of innovation, shaped by recent progress with AI. I think AI is enabling amazing things but question how its application is leading to innovation. And ultimately how it’s creating value. I’m far from the only one which is why we shouldn’t be starry eyed and engage in innovation theatre. The…

    Stephen Danelutti

  • Humans Change Slowly – AI Didn’t Get the Memo

    AI is racing ahead while companies are still tying their shoes. Logarithmic, slow, human change vs exponential, accelerating, technological change. The classic tension between the two explains why humans consistently underestimate tech’s impact. I’ve written about this before and this post of curated articles proves it: Minding the accelerating technology gap. Employees vs. AI: Still Buffering.…

    Stephen Danelutti

  • Prompting for humans first

    First the gold rush for the perfect AI prompt. Everyone wanting to crack the code — the magic that makes the model sing. Courses, cheat sheets, LinkedIn posts, etc. It matters. But. AI ‘Skills’ Are Replacing Prompts. Besides this, the big decisions — budget, headcount, direction, go or no-go — are still made by humans.…

    Stephen Danelutti

  • Act small – think big – accelerate with AI

    How we organise ourselves at work is undergoing a tectonic shift. That’s not just hyperbole or a reactionary response to all the recent talk of the AI apocalypse affecting SaaS companies and beyond. I think this has been brewing for a while. One longstanding aspect is effectiveness of start-ups versus large, incumbent organisations covered in…

    Stephen Danelutti

  • The New Human Stack – Skills for an AI‑First Workplace

    If AI automates most white‑collar tasks within 12–18 months, what will humans actually do. And how do we prepare now? Recent remarks by Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman suggest AI will reach human‑level performance on most professional tasks within that window, with autonomous agents coordinating many enterprise workflows over the following 2–3 years. You either…

    Stephen Danelutti

  • AI in Overdrive

    What a week in technology and even for those not in technology – because as the saying goes (to paraphrase), if technology sneezes, everyone catches a cold. Start-up AI companies have launched new features and that has tanked some tech stocks, roiled labour markets and generally contributed to the noise levels and hype around AI.…

    Stephen Danelutti

  • AI adoption and innovation in the enterprise

    This is my usual post curating some of the best articles I’ve read in the last month, just a slightly different guise. They all gravitate around areas I’m focused on at work. These days, they are seemingly what all work has become: adoption of AI technology at work and innovation, guided by the right change…

    Stephen Danelutti

  • A month is a long time in technology

    I could easily have said a week or even a day. I chose a month because it has been roughly that long since my last post. This is partly self imposed but also due to my work load. A new role at work setting up an innovation program supporting AI service delivery offerings has kept…

    Stephen Danelutti

  • SenseMaking from the Web

    Dive into this collection of articles covering the twists and turns of AI-driven transformation. From kaizen-fueled strategies at Microsoft to debunked innovation fairy tales, you’ll discover why some AI projects soar while others, well, don’t make it past the launchpad. Also, why creativity and imagination are still our last best bet at retaining sanity, being…

    Stephen Danelutti

  • Battle of the design tools – Canva vs Microsoft – round two

    A lot can happen in 31 months. I first wrote about this on February the 4th 2023: Battle of the design tools – Canva vs Microsoft Designer. I’ve been using both tools since and one of them has come an extremely long way. But how do they stack up today? I’m not going to go…

    Stephen Danelutti